Beautiful Graces

Melissa and I are cooking up a post together with highlights from our holidays (our Amanda is in Missouri with Curtis and his family) but I thought I’d jump on here and jot a quick hello since it’s been a while. I am slowly getting back my energy and feeling more like myself. (You’ve prayed six pounds back on me! Thank you! Come to a screeching halt at six more. Grin.) True to the post-op norm, however, I suddenly hit a brick wall each day and I’m done. Can hardly lift a finger. It’s all I can do to be mildly hilarious with my family at that point but I have humbly managed. (I so hope you newbies understand our weird humor around here.) I’ve gotten out a little while each day but by the time I got back home, I only had the energy to moderate your comments and nothing left to write a fresh post. My inner man was shouting a loud hello. My outer man needed a heating pad and a nap. I lapsed to the latter, as I knew you’d want me to.

Alas, I’ve gotten to you today before doing anything else so I’ll hit a brick wall on something else instead.

It’s Keith’s and my 31st wedding anniversary. That’s why I’m writing today. I’m not looking for congratulations. Y’all have gone out of your way to send us so many greetings recently. I don’t want to wear you out. I just want to share it with you. I have so many feelings. More feelings than energy so I’ll limit myself to expressing only a few.

Keith and I have rarely been together on our actual anniversary. I had the audacity to set our wedding date at the peak of deer season. I’m so sorry if many of you are offended by hunters. I am not a hunter – can hardly stomp on a roach – but I surely did marry one and there’s not a whole lot I can do about it now but love the hunter. And I do. He didn’t mean to marry a woman who does what I do either and he finds it just about as baffling. Anyway, that wild man and I have been married for 31 years today. We celebrated two nights ago before he left town but, actually, this is our big day. God seems to ordain that I end up alone with Him on my wedding anniversary every year instead of alone with Keith. I am quite certain it is because He’s responsible for our longevity. Not Keith and me.

That we have a single hair left on our heads from the roller coaster we’ve ridden is a testimony to the staying power of God, especially if you consider how many of my hairs have been weakened at the roots by bleach. We closed out 2008 with one of the hardest years of our marriage. In fact, I’m embarrassed to tell you that we were hundreds of miles apart on our 30th anniversary and hardly spoke. On purpose. That was a first for us. It was also frightening and I hope and pray we never do that again. We prefer to talk things out passionately – even fight them out – rather than freeze each other out. Last year was a huge and terrifying departure from our norm and dangerous. I don’t want any repeats.

After the worst start to a new year of marriage in our three-decade history (last December 30th), we then proceeded to have our best year yet. Only Jesus. God used a host of things to bring us to such a happy season. I spent much of the year writing the insecurity book and, in the process, receiving a deep and much needed work of the Spirit. I don’t know if another woman on the planet will be jarred the least by it but it was a life changing journey for me. Keith also came to a new place in his life with God. That’s for him to share. Not me. I’ll own my own stuff and let him tell his story to his own discretion. Keep in mind that this happy year of marriage was amid a hard physical health year. Odd how that can happen. No year in a normal life is without hardship.

All that to say, a few minutes ago I was sitting on my bed having my quiet time and my I-phone dinged with an incoming text, jotted quickly from a certain deer stand six hours from Houston.

You are my lifelong sweets I adore you I love marital bliss

(It was written just like that. No punctuations or periods.)

And you, Ivan Keith Moore, are MINE. Right this minute, I love you more than I’ve ever loved you. I appreciate you more than I’ve ever appreciated you. Most of the time I have no idea what to do with you but this I know. I can’t imagine being anything but bored stiff with anybody else. We’ve been a lot of things but boring is not among them. I had no idea what I was doing 31 years ago today. I was scared out of my mind in that rented off-white wedding dress when I walked down that aisle with my father and wondered how on earth two such troubled people would make it. It was already very clear that we were both loons. I do, however, know what I’m doing today. I choose you. You ARE my lifelong sweets. I adore you, too. And right this very minute, propped up all by myself on a mess of pillows, hours from my compulsive outdoorsman-husband, with a phone sitting just to my left elbow sporting a text that speaks louder than three dozen roses, I love marital bliss, too.

Happy Anniversary.

Thank You, Lord.

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What’s a Siesta?

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